Temple of the Neural Buddha

I'm being sponsored By MacMillan Cancer Research to enter the Edinburgh Big Fun Run

2009-09-15T15:29:17Z

Yes, so, finally, the famous stag night. (Part, The First.)

2009-08-29T13:37:04Z

Well, the preparations for it actually weren't that difficult and, despite a bit of gratuitous pressure from my brother (yes, Bob, you know it's true!) being Best Man was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. So far, anyway. Still the wedding itself to go. Of course, I think I was pretty lucky and the existence of the internet, Goddess bless it, made a few things a lot easier. Anyway, the night itself.

Actually, we started at 10.00am on the day, me, Bob and my cousin Tommy who had stayed at Bob's the night before. We had gone out the previous night but I don't want to get into that because for some reason I was just really tired and not up for it at all and ended up having a pretty early one while Bob and Tommy stayed up and drank whisky and took photos. (More on that later.) So anyway, we had breakfast which I paid for, getting an early start, and then shopped for really flashy trainers. Bob wanted a Sacha Baron Cohen theme for the event and we had previously hired Ali G costumes and wanted the trainers to go with them. That done, we went back to the house to meet up with a pal of Bob's (Dave) before the next event.

1pm, the Cain's brewery tour. Having dropped off our costumes at the pub to change in to later, we headed off to get the day's drinking off to a good start. My brother in law and his sons had manifested a reliability failure so it was just the four of us to grab a quick pint and then be guided around the brewery. We had this old geezer as a guide who was pretty cool and his version of the history of the place was fairly entertaining. However the mechanics of the process weren't too magical (wheat, malt and hops comes in one end, beer comes out the other) but fortunately the whole thing was only an hour long so pretty soon we were back to the drinking.

My sister's husband (Richard) and my elder nephew (Jack) had showed up by then so we had a couple of pints each and a (very) light lunch, which were included in the tour. I thoroughly recommend the pub associated with the brewery, by the way, prices are reasonable and the beer quality is excellent. Dave had to run a costume related errand and Richard offered to give him a lift so, while we waited, we rounded off the drinks with a couple more beers. Then it was off to Formby for round three.

Approximately 4pm. While we were in the pub, the weather was very hot and bright but when we decided to shift outside it (typically) clouded over and started to rain. While it was nice however, we were commenting on how good it would be to have a swim. This fitted in with my brothers plans precisely. We had been talking about this and enthusiasm was not at it's highest. Still, into taxis and cars we got and off to Formby beach we went. On the thirty minute journey up, a miracle occurred. The weather became really nice. By the time we got there it was gorgeous and there were no more excuses.

For those of you not intimately acquainted with the urban art scene, Anthony Gormley, the designer of the Angel of the North, has set up a row of life size, mannequin like statues, below the high tide line, facing out to sea, at Formby beach, west of Liverpool. So, after publicly en-nakeding our selves, dressed in fluorescent, lime-green mankinis, we waded out to the closest statue, dressed it in a similar fashion and posed for photos and mpegs. (Links are not safe for work or sanity. You have been warned.) Oh, the shame/pride of it!

Anime I have watched in the last year or so - Red Garden

2009-07-26T15:15:36Z

Five very different young women are apparently only linked by the facts that they are all pupils at an exclusive New York private school and that they shared a friendship with a girl who has seemingly committed suicide. They are summoned to a meeting in a car park by a mysterious woman, who threatens them with dire consequences if they do not attend. There they are forced to fight for their lives against a man who transforms into a beast-like monster before their eyes. Eventually they receive horrifying revelations about the events of the night before the battle, which none of them had been previously able to remember.

Red Garden is urban fantasy, unusually set in the US. The plot is eventually revealed to be a loose variation on vampires versus werewolves although this is never stated to be the case and the parallels are somewhat tenuous. The characterisations are good, the girls never fully resolve their differences and the youngest of them, far from becoming the mascot, is, (understandably, under the stress of their circumstances) actually bullied for being weak and ineffectual. None of the characters are completely sympathetic (with the partial exception of the usual Mary-Sue main character, who is actually shown to be something of a priss) but none of them are really bad either. In short, they're well drawn characters with flaws and backgrounds of their own. The show doesn't short on the secondary characters either, although, predictably, I would have liked to have found out more about Paula, the head of Grace, the powerful student council clique.
The production values are very high, the character designs are almost photo-realistic, without being overly heavily CGI-ed, with the odd exception of the noses which occasionally look exaggerated from certain angles. The music is good (I particularly liked the end theme to the first half), with a bizarre exception. Every now and then, the main characters have a tendency to break into song in a highly incongruous fashion. I recommend you fast-forward these sections.

Five girl band, dark urban/high-school fantasy, low-level super powers.
It won't change your world but it's a solid 24 episodes of entertainment. 7/10.

Anime I have watched in the last year or so - Fate Stay Night

2009-07-17T21:31:06Z

Ten years ago - a devastating combat results in an enormous fireball which destroys an entire city block. The conflagration's only survivor is an orphaned young boy who is rescued by a man who later adopts him as his son. As the boy grows up his adopted father reveals that he is in fact a magus. The boy also gains a great desire to help people and make the world a better place.
In the present, the boy has become a young man and his father has since died. He lives alone in the house he has inherited, supported by a girl he has known since childhood and one of his teachers. He still feels the urge to improve the world but has learned that he has little or no magical talent of his own except for a single ability. However, he works hard to fulfill not only his own responsibilities but also those of people around him.
In the mean time, ominous events have started to re-occur. There is murder, sickness and death that the authorities seem unable to prevent or explain. An eerie young girl warns the boy that if he doesn't summon his Servant soon, he will die. At the same time other mages emerge and begin to summon Servants of their own. However, even the most gifted among them seem to be unable to summon the Servant who is reputed to be the most powerful of all - Sabre.

Fate Stay Night is the kind of show that is basically aimed right at me. It gets off to a relatively slow start but promises a range and depth of plot complications which it largely delivers on. It maintains a dark tone which isn't undermined as many other series do. There are moments of humour but they tend to be self-referential and in the background and usually serve to strengthen characterisation. On the minus side, Fate Stay Night is based on a computer game and, as a consequence, its plot structure is seriously flawed. Most threads are eventually resolved but it has a tendency to introduce characters and then lose track of them. The core characters are, however, so well defined that this generally makes up for this failing.
There is an unfortunate tendency in anime for main characters to be weak and ineffectual or otherwise unsympathetic, presumably to allow strong secondary characters to shine. The main male character of Fate Stay Night suffers from this to a certain extent. However, as regards the female lead this is certainly not the case. She doesn't appear until the end of the second episode (leaving me to wonder who the figure in the end titles actually was) but when she does arrive, she starts kicking ass right out of the gate! Don't be misled, this is not the loud-mouthed, arrogant, condescending, manic-depressive female character beloved of so many other shows. (Not that I have anything against that!) On the contrary, she is polite, reserved, serious, graceful, intelligent, competent and withdrawn to the point of being cold. But when it comes to combat and the fulfillment of her mission, her reputation for being second to none is fully deserved.

Dark, romantic, super-powered, urban fantasy.
Good music, good plot (if a little poorly structured), good production values, attractive character designs (relatively realistic), excellent characterisation (for main characters, anyway).
Overall, 8/10.

I am now using LJ again

2009-07-06T14:48:26Z

This is because it supports RSS and thus it's content can be embedded in my own web page. So read it there. Not on LJ.

I ran ten miles today.

2009-07-06T14:40:45Z

'Cos I am just that kind of awesome! And I went to the gym afterwards. I felt like an advert for Nike. But in a good way.

I made the century!

2008-04-13T20:54:55Z

100 upper body reps! 101, actually. And no LJ posts for over a year! IAFWA!
In other news:

I am currently taking a break from working, after holding down a six month IT contract in Livingston.

I am no longer going to the gym, after going for about four months, as I got out of the habit with my excessive commuting schedule. I am considering going back, however.

I am actually getting on with some of my personal projects. It's only taken me a year and a half. I'm going to seriously consider what shitty jobs I take in the future. Nothing that's more than half an hour from door to door, that's for sure. Not for a while anyway. Anyway, the projects:

I've now got a fully working Catan board generator in Visual Basic (apart from a bit of counter ordering, which is trivial) and I've done some core maths work on corresponding mouse and piece locations.

I've done some serious figuring out of how to use GIMP. Basically, you use Photoshop for everything and then import the project into the GIMP in order to animate it :) This has allowed me to create fun stuff (ie new LJ icons, see above) from screencapped AMVs and DVDs.

Speaking of AMVs, my AMV DVD project continues to generate new versions. It currently has 40 AMVs on it (including short spoofs but no longer any op/eds) for a total of two hours. I'd like to start work on a second volume and I went through the top ten percent on animemusicvideos.org but for very little return. A lot of what I did find was in mp4 format as well. I'm going to have to look in to that.

I have also been downloading a lot of anime. I have (finally!) finished torrenting Rose of Versailles and have downloaded over half of Ouran in AVIs. My new torrent project is The Wire which is a live action cop drama which someone at Conpulsion told me about and is supposed to be all "if you like the Shield then you'll love this".

And, yes, I have applied for some jobs but no written applications this week. I'll have to pull my finger out a little there. There are actually very few jobs around at the moment and a large proportion of them seem to be email CVs. Which is OK. Sorta.

No progress on Project Citizenship. I should really get my act together there as well.

I should have a look at my long term goals list as I haven't looked at it for a while. I know it has 'Go to agencies' on it but frankly, that can GTF for a while at least.

Well, that was longer than I thought it was going to be. Maybe I should cut it but hell, I'm writing this to get things clear in my own mind, not for anyone else's benefit.

My work finally made a move

2007-04-10T17:56:56Z

I got put on a formal verbal warning for poor performance today. With luck they might get round to sacking me in about six or eight weeks. Yay! I need to apply for more jobs anyway.
In other news:
I've started going to the gym with ogrilion. I've been twice now and it's pretty good. I'm probably going to make it a regular Friday night thing. I ran a game at the Nationals and that went well I think. What else? I'm sleeping better but not ideally. I'm going through some mood swings. I need to do more things I actually enjoy. The job is really kicking that in the ass as it's just draining the life out of me. Oh well. Hopefully it will be over relatively soon and I might even be able to get another job in the mean time.

Last chance birthday invite!

2007-02-16T22:15:57Z

My flat, 8pm tomorrow night. Clubbing later, maybe. Address on request.

Not a bad week overall

2007-02-08T21:09:19Z

I've applied for three jobs and made a start on another one today. Still loads to do, courtesy of my visit to the job centre last week. I have a job interview this coming Monday. It's a good job. It's only half hours but I should be able to live on the money. The prospect of only working half the time appeals to me. It means I can maybe get on with some of my personal projects that have been building up since I started my current job.

Up to 83 reps on the weights. Is the century achievable?!?

I was on strike yesterday

2007-02-01T21:12:01Z

For the first time ever. It's also the first time I've been in a union. I'm only there for another four months but conditions are just so ludicrously crap and getting worse, seemingly on a monthly basis, that I felt I had to do something.

It was actually pretty useful to have a day off. I managed to find my British citizenship book which I have been looking for for months and thought was lost/nicked so that's ten pounds and some time saved. I also managed to get to the job centre, despite the fact they were supposed to be on strike as well, and they had some jobs available which I phoned up for. I was going to go to the haidressers as well but I got an instant interview for a rather rubbish shop job which I thought I met as well go along to instead. I'm not sure when I'm going to manage to have a hair cut now as from this Saturday I'll probably have enough job applications to keep me busy all of next week. I also have to renew my bus pass this weekend. Wow, this is fascinating stuff! Oh well, I guess I'l struggle along somehow.

Ciao.

It's that time again

2007-02-01T21:01:44Z

Yes, it's my birthday in two weeks. I'm currently thinking in terms of drinks in my flat from about 8pm on the following Saturday possibly going on somewhere afterwards. My address is available on request.

So that's Rik's Birthday 8pm Saturday 17th of February at my flat.

Small update

2007-01-25T21:09:52Z

I've applied for two jobs this week and tonight I did 73 upper body reps with the weights. That's the most I've ever done. This would be more meaningful if I actually knew what they weighed! People have been dropping with the lurgy all around me but I've barely had a sniffle. I'm still not sleeping very well but I'm apparently pretty healthy. I just don't feel very good. Still, if I can keep this motivation thing going things can only get better.

Sacked or not?

2007-01-18T21:11:21Z

As some of you may know, I was threatened with the sack on Tuesday. This is because my production figures are generally poor and on this day they were particularly bad. I was basically told I was going to have to shape up or ship out. The next day an interesting thing happened. In our morning meeting we were told that our production figures for the whole team (consisting of approximately ten people including me) had dropped from the previous day by thirty percent. Our line manager asked us if there was any reason why this was the case and the teams attitude was generally to shrug and say "explaining bad figures is your job not ours". He came up with some bullshit explanation to give to his superior. I now rather think that the reasons he came up with to cover our team and himself will also cover me. I'm also thinking it's now going to be quite difficult to sack me based on that day's figures. I've taken a copy of the figures (which are initialled by him and his boss) home to cover myself a bit further. Anyone got any thoughts on this?

It's just not worth it...

2007-01-11T19:09:22Z

I just poured some hot chicken grease into the bin, basically just to wind up my flatmate. He'd just had a go at me for spilling some water from boiling rice. Now he's blaming me for there being liquid at the bottom of bin bags. Like that never happens otherwise. *groan*

Back from Egypt!

2007-01-02T08:39:16Z

We we were in Sharm Al Sheikh which is in Sinai by the Red Sea and used to belong to Israel. The area has only been developed over the last twenty years and as my brother repeatedly said he remembers it when it was all desert! The weather was good (around 25 degrees), if a bit windy. The water was usually warmer than the air so a whole lot of snorkelling was done. You had to pay to get on to a beach (three to five British pounds a day) as they were all owned by someone, even the ones which were signposted as being public. This was disconcerting at first but it was well worth it. The coral and other marine wildlife were very impressive (photos to come, hopefully) and we saw better and better underwater sights almost every day ending with Ras Mohammed National Park on Saturday, which was our last full day.

The hotel was three stars which was basic but perfectly fine and a good breakfast was included every day. The town itself is described as the Las Vegas of Egypt and this is a pretty apt description. It was tacky and overpriced and as well as having a Hard Rock Cafe and a club which hosted Ministry of Sound it also had a Pizza Hut, a KFC and a TGI Fridays all next door to each other! There were more authentic places to eat which was just as well as it wasn't really practical to either buy or prepare your own food. We did make one trip to the "Old Town" (all of twenty years!) and got some nice bread and fruit but this wasn't worth doing regularly.

All in all my goal of getting some summer sun has been well and truly achieved with the added bonus of some really excellent snorkelling having been done!

I'm in the pub! Come drink with me!

2006-11-03T18:53:27Z

This made me laugh. From the Metro:

Tricia Marwick, SNP MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife, said: "If the work had been carried out a year ago, the decision could have been made this summer instead of next."

No, never! Gotta luv the SNP! ___2S___

Legalisation of prostitution

2006-09-30T09:00:32Z

[Disclaimer: I have no background in economics. All viewpoints expressed here are purely my own. I also apologise to the PC advocates out there for the use of the term "black market". If you have a better term I'm interested in hearing it.]

I was having a discussion on this topic in the pub last night. Unfortunately it got somewhat heated and confused as these things do.

I have a number of issues with prostitution, one of which is probably just basic prudishness. I'm just pretty old fashioned about some things. Regardless, I think prostitution could be legalised and probably should. Naturally this was not the position I took in the debate!
One point I was trying to make was that I believe that there is a large proportion of the sex industry that will only thrive in a black market economy. In the legitimate market products and services are sold on the basis of two things; quality and publicity. Good products reach a market through word of mouth and mediocre products require advertising. Of course most goods and services use a combination of these attributes. Prostitution relies on neither of these. No-one claims that prostitutes are prettier or more skilled than average. You also can't advertise an illegal service. The property sex is sold on is availability. If you tried to sell a conventional product on this basis I think people would pretty quickly see the problem. "OK, buy this food. Its unappealing and low quality and it might make you sick but hell, it's the best you're gonna get."

Legalisation has different implications with regard to prostitution than other phenomenon such as drugs or gun ownership. Primarily I think this is because it is based on a service rather than a product. Sex doesn't have to be produced or imported, it just has to be performed. You can't police it more than any other private interaction between people. With drugs you can make an argument that legalisation may bring the price down as smuggling and violent crime are high overheads that people only engage in for a large profit. A significant argument in favour of gun ownership is the "create a crime, create a criminal" principle. It would take a fairly major change in society to make owning the necessary equipment for prostitution illegal. (Not that certain societies haven't taken steps in that direction).

OK, I'm kinda rambling but I'm sure there's a point in there somewhere. I'm posting this if only to try and make my own thoughts clearer.

In other news

2006-09-28T17:51:08Z

Let's see. I'm going down to the Wirral for a week, from Saturday, to see family and catch up with a friend of mine who is now studying in Liverpool. And generally chill out from work and get looked after.

I was, not dreading exactly, but anticipating with slight regret the end of summer (is there a word for that?) but now that term has started again I'm finding it pretty pleasant to have a semi-regular social life again. One particular highlight is ogrilion and others organising a semi-formal GM-ing workshop where we have one week on one week off sessions of one person running a one-off and then discussing the game and technique in general in the following week.

What's out: TV; what's in: download anime.
There's shite all on but moving flat means I've been able to ditch my TV license standing order. I'm now more aware of non-streaming, non file-sharing anime download sites (although with an i'net connection in my flat these are useful too) and have started building up a reasonable collection which I can hopefully trade with other people. Specifically, I've just got hold of El Hazard which means I'm now in a position to start on my long thought about AMV project. I'm pretty enthused about that but that's how a lot of my projects start out. We'll see how it goes, anyway.

Landlords: born or hatched?

2006-09-28T16:52:29Z

It's a chicken or egg situation; is there something about becoming a landlord that blinds you to basic human sensibilities or is the profession dominated by people whose ability to empathise with others was already terminally stunted?

My landlord and his wife seem unable to comprehend that having a firm of window cleaners, who have not been vetted by me in any way, trample all over my room completely unsupervised may be something I'm not entirely comfortable with. In fairness, the situation was partly explained to me before I moved in but it's only now (two or three anonymous visits later) that I'm being told that if I lock my door the cleaners won't go in. Initially my landlord told me he just hands them the keys to the flat (at his home) and lets them get on with it.

It's not just the huge insensitivity allowing strangers to wander into the private areas of someones home that gets to me nor even the fact that this is specifically breaking our contract and breaking property law in general but also the immense stupidity of his attitude. Many landlords require that you insure your property, mine is effectively preventing me from doing so. Doesn't he realise that I could get a witness to observe the presence of valuable property in my room (like for instance my £1,000 laptop), find out from a flat mate that the cleaners had been round, sell said property to someone else and then sue his ass? He's exposing himself to massive liability. I could take a dump in my room, claim they did it and then clean up (sorry) on emotional distress damages. OK, DNA testing notwithstanding but you get the idea. Prick. And Prickette.

[edit] In addition to this, I've just been told that the cleaners have been around every month since I moved in (at the end of July) and this is the first I've heard of it despite the fact that I have furniture and a TV blocking the window so they can't get to it. I should possibly mention that when I signed my contract I was told the windows would be cleaned as and when it was convenient for the cleaners and in fact I'm still being told it's impossible for them to give me any notice of when they will come around. Arseholes. [/edit]

Catan session?

2006-08-16T16:35:53Z

I'm volunteering my flat for a board games session possibly including

Settlers of Catan.

Sunday, around 4pm? Alternative suggestions are welcome.

A weekend update. Why not.

2006-08-14T19:06:17Z

Went to Auld Hoose Friday night. Inadvertently ran into Ross' leaving do. Played Mao with random people including Steve and spacelem. Stayed moderately late and left as other people were leaving and because I was pretty tired.

Woke early Saturday morning to find one of my flatmates was having a party! The fact that she was playing music in her room wasn't too bad but her guests were banging all the doors. One girl got locked out of the flat and repeatedly rang the buzzer. She then somehow gained access to the stairwell and started banging on the door. I had to let her in in the end. I took my flatmate aside and had a word which seemed to go over OK so hopefully we won't have too many repeats of this in the future. When I got back to my room after all this I found it was now all of 6.30am. Nice!

I managed to get some fairly solid sleep after this and got up about 11.30 am. Didn't get very much done in the day, just backed up my hard drive, did some LJ setup stuff and went to the shops. Saturday night I went to ogrilion's and played Catan and Texas Hold-Em. Was fun. Had pretty much ideal Catan set up at one point and didn't notice until part way through the game. Yes, I won. And at poker too. But not the three player game. Got in about 2am.

Sunday I didn't sleep well. Woke up at 7.30 and got about another hours sleep after that maybe. Piddled around before meeting gnaremoob at noon for Fringe Sunday. Was knackered all day. Nevertheless we both signed up for Rock Karaoke. 'moob did 500 Miles by the Proclaimers and I did Bon Jovi's Living on a Prayer. When I got up on stage They made me wear a poodle perm wig they had as a prop! So I got up and rocked my little heart out. Was fun.

We had lunch at the Auld Hoose and then went back to mine to chill for a bit. I was then dragged out to see what was going on on the Royal Mile. We watched an escapologist who was quite amusing but basically stretched out two rather poor and one slightly above average bit with acres of mediocre humour. Worth the pound each we gave him I suppose. We then went back to mine for some chinese. By this time I was absolutely shattered so we just chilled out in front of Starship Troopers.

News! OK, not too exciting...

2006-08-12T11:47:40Z

I am revising my LJ policy now that I have teh internet in my flat. Stay tuned.

I have a laptop!

2005-11-12T13:55:24Z

And it's wireless! I'm typing this from Teviot Bar. For free, baby! Woot!

Heated pub debates

2005-11-09T08:48:40Z

I had an advocate of ID sportingly admit that they had lost the argument to me last night. Not so the fox hunting supporter.